Time to focus on City Rail Link funding, not fast-tracking

When it comes to the City Rail Link every post
has been promoted as a winning post. Auckland Mayor Len
Brown is now celebrating a saving of $484m with the latest
decision to scrap plans for a Newton station and reduce the
number of trains.

This saving coupled with the latest
increased figures for rail patronage has the Mayor once
again pushing hard for a 2016 start date.

While this
year’s lift in patronage is good news, let’s not forget
it comes off a very low base with rail user numbers actually
dipping last year. We are still miles off reaching the
Government’s bottom line or the Mayor’s aspirational
target – both of which point to a doubling of patronage,
or 20m annual trips, in a few short years.

Two years ago
Auckland Transport expected to deliver 14.5 million annual
rail trips by June this year but we remain three million
short of that forecast, despite electrification giving a
boost to numbers in recent months.

Last year the
Government effectively brought forward the start date of the
City Rail Link from 2030 to 2020, and promised to work with
Auckland Council to develop a joint business plan in 2017.
An emotional Mayor burst in to the council debating chamber
to deliver the news, with councillors delivering him a round
of applause.

Within six months however he was writing to
the Prime Minister believing the start date was no longer
good enough and saying he wanted to start construction
regardless. He suggested bringing forward $250m of spending
and volunteered ratepayers to underwrite the Government’s
contribution until 2020. Mr Key wrote back and held the
line, reiterating that the Government was committed to
funding its 50% from 2020 unless rail patronage and CBD
employment growth numbers significantly changed.

Getting
the cold shoulder from the Government however wasn’t
enough to deter the Mayor. He remains determined to soldier
on.

So our funding partner says not now, councillors have
unanimously passed a resolution that rules no construction
until funding is in place, and ratepayers still have no idea
of how they’re expected to pay for their 50%. Yet
staggeringly the Mayor is set to propose in the pending
draft 10-year Long Term Plan, to start the work first and
find the money later.

I firmly believe we should be
working to the Government’s more realistic timetable,
after doing the joint business case in 2017 as has been
agreed. That will give the council time to sort out its
funding and that would be the prudent thing to do.

And
it’s not as though things aren’t happening. The route
has been secured, properties have been purchased, and
project design is highly advanced. In fact Auckland
ratepayers have already spent $99m on City Rail Link
preconstruction work and there's another $70m in this year's
budget.

Everyone can see sense in working with Precinct
Properties, which will redevelop the Westfield Downtown
Shopping Centre opposite Britomart. They want to get on as
soon as possible with their high-rise plans and make
provision for the rail tunnels as part of their
development.

However some of us also can see significant
and unfair exposure for ratepayers if we start digging
without the Government and without even our own funding
sorted.

The Mayor argues the city will grind to a halt if
we don’t move quicker. However the council’s own
recently commissioned PWC report noted that electrification
and the new electric trains “will provide sufficient
capacity to accommodate considerable further growth in rail
patronage.”

It seems that in the foreseeable future rail
capacity is only likely to come under real pressure during
what is described as “the peak of the peak” at
Britomart. What’s more, PWC noted that this busy period,
identified as 7.46am to 8.15am week days, could be easily be
offset by Auckland Transport implementing travel demand
strategies such as cheaper early bird fares.

Last year the
council’s own Consensus Building Group, which is spending
$3m to come up alternative ways to address Auckland’s
transport funding shortfall, released a report which
included interviews with Auckland residents. Tellingly, it
concluded that “Aucklanders want to get the best out of
existing infrastructure before proceeding with new
investments”.

Some of us agree. I would like to see more
money going into bus infrastructure, but sadly the likes of
a north western bus corridor just keeps getting deferred.
The City Rail Link is already gobbling up money that could
otherwise be spent on bus-lanes, ferry facilities, cycle and
walkways. It’s crazy to think that this financial year 84%
of Auckland Transport’s capital expenditure for public
transport is going solely into rail, when still only about
1.6% of Aucklanders catch the train according to Census
2013.

Since Aucklanders were introduced to the latest City
Rail Link project nearly a decade ago the reported cost of
this massive 3.5km twin tunnelling project has gone up
five-fold from $500m to $2.4b. It is unrealistic to think
that there won’t be more cost escalation.

While the
Mayor’s latest trumpeting of savings and patronage are
encouraging, overseas experiences show us that this will be
a very long and painful project which will endure budget
blow-outs and burden future generations with billions of
dollars of debt.

With such a costly scenario not
discounted by anyone, it would be prudent for the Mayor to
now focus his energy on coming up with sustainable funding
solutions. He needs to forget about further fast-tracking.
2020 will come soon
enough.

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